Story: The Patchwork Quilt

What follows is an analysis of a Woman's World story with suggestions/observations for people who want to sell stories to WW, peppered with some personal opinion, too. :)

Story: "The Patchwork Quilt" by Jennie Pitkus from the September 18, 2007 issue.

Tagline: Elizabeth knew that some things are definitely worth waiting for...

In a nutshell: Elizabeth is saving to buy a condo and puts herself on a strict budget. However, she falls in love with a quilt in a consignment shop. A man buys it for a window display in his new bookstore/coffee house, just down the street from the condo complex. They agree that she can make monthly payments to buy the quilt when he changes the window display. Six months later, Elizabeth has her condo, her quilt, and her guy. :) He suggested making payments so he could continue to see her.

Teaching Point: The climax of this story occurs in the middle, strangely enough. In the first half of the story, we find out about Elizabeth's goal to buy the condo, how she covets the quilt. Halfway through, she finds out that it's been bought. The rest of the story tells how she resolves her quilt problem.

This jostling of the climax works mainly because the story is so short. This would never fly with a full length novel, because there would be little reason for the reader to stick with the story if there is no tension building.

Best Part: As a barista, I was tickled that the story started out with the heroine drinking a raspberry mocha latte. Yum.

In My Humble Opinion: It seemed a tiny bit of a reach to believe he would recognize Elizabeth from the slight description the consignment shop owner gave him.